habits of the majority must predominate ;-whatever is, is. But we must not lay violent hands upon this exquisite specimen of reasoning, or insinuate that his facts are apocryphal. To refute the arguments of the sage captain would be as great an insult to our readers, as it would be to explain his witticisms. We may add, however, that this is a tolerably fair example of the style in which he pack-saddles our system of government, and piles on all manner of enormities.

Mrs. Trollope, upon whom so many anathemas have been expended, arrived in this country about six months after the arrival of Capt. Hall, and remained here between three and four years. She first landed with her family at New-Orleans, where she remained a few days, and made sundry observations upon the manners and customs of the people, neither of which proved remarkably agreeable to her taste. Thence she sailed up the river to Cincinnati, where she commenced the great work which she came to achieve, the establishment of a bazaar; or, as it is called in the Yankee vulgate, a fancy-store. She first erected a building, which Mr. Hamilton describes as a Græco-Moresco-Gothic-Chinese structure. Capt. Marryat, after an attentive survey of this extraordinary apparition, pronounced it of that "order of architecture which may be styled the preposterous." The bazaar was finally completed and went into operation. In the mean time Mrs. Trollope was exploring the city and the regions round about, gathering the materials for her description of the "Domestic Manners of the Americans." She found her residence among the "free-borns" anything but agreeable. The streets were muddy and filled with swine, living and dead. The people were all ignorant and boorish, the women being very childish and pious, and the men "redolent of whisky and onions." Moreover, she was "taken sick, as the Americans call being unwell," and when somewhat convalescent, had an opportunity of testing the relative worth of English and American literature. She read the whole of Cooper's novels. The consequence was an immediate relapse, and an "additional ounce of calomel hardly sufficed to neutralize the effect of these raw-head and bloody-bones adventures." Then a "happy thought struck her," and she read the whole series of the Waverley novels, as the next prescription-not a homopathic dose, certainly. She immediately began to recover: the "wholesome vigor of every page seemed to communicate itself to her nerves," and "when it was over she had the pleasure of finding that she could walk half-adozen yards at a time."

When she recovered, she was greeted with the fact that the

bazaar speculation was a hopeless affair, and must be abandoned. The cause of the failure is not given; but the truth of the case is, Mrs. Trollope's eldest son, who was the manager of the business department, was, in accordance with Capt. Hall's theory, overcome by the powerful influence of republican institutions! She therefore left Cincinnati in March, 1830, crossed the Alleghanies to Maryland, traveled through the northern and eastern states, and at the expiration of about a year returned to England and published her book. The work shows her by no means destitute of talent. There is a ready command of language-of plain, nervous Saxonwhich is a merit in a literary point of view. Its defects are moral, rather than intellectual. Like Miss Martineau, Mrs. Trollope possesses wit, and a keen perception of the ridiculous; but she uses her powers to annoy rather than to please. In fact, she is a Martineau after the acetous fermentation. She adores England, and looks upon America with a sort of cool, malignant, fiendish scorn; we would set her down as the very incarnation of Johnson's idea of a good hater. We are very forcibly reminded of the "stupid, bigoted contempt of everything foreign," which a certain countryman of Mrs. Trollope, traveling in the Levant, declares characteristic of English servants. There are descriptions, absolutely beyond belief, of scenes which our fair author alledges that she saw with her own eyes; such, for instance, as the account of the "revival" in the "principal Presbyterian church in Cincinnati." But with all her faults, she told us some truths which we would do well to heed. Her charges are, at times, like her favorite department of literature, founded on fact, and are but caricatures of evils that have a real existence. And, in fine, we conclude, that had the gimcracks and confections gone off better in the bazaar speculation, this book would never have been written, or would have been very different in its tone.

A few months before the western hemisphere was deprived of the presence of this amiable lady, another hunter after foreign marvels arrived in the person of Mr. T. Hamilton. Like his illustrious predecessor, he was given to dreams and works of imagination; but he was a producer as well as a consumer. He had already written his "Cyril Thornton." Mrs. Trollope did not make any attempt, we believe, till her volume of travels was given to the public. She then published the "Refugee in America," in which she dispenses her sarcasm and bitter ridicule with all the ardor and liberality of one who has just discovered her forte, and is fully resolved to make the most of it.

Mr. Hamilton manifests some anxiety to impress the world with

the important fact that he considers himself a gentleman. He may have been one in conventionals, for aught we know, but he gives rather equivocal proof of his being endowed with any extraordinary elevation of mind. Like Capt. Hall, he views everything with loyal optics; but he shows a recklessness of assertion not very creditable in one of such lofty pretensions as he puts forth. He had a very important end in view. He had heard certain ignorant men in the reformed parliament quote the experience of the United States, as furnishing precedents for English legislation; and he then "certainly did feel that another work on America was yet wanted." And, moreover, he certainly did feel that he, T. Hamilton, Esq., was the gentleman destined to furnish this desideratum. He tells us that the Americans are fast degenerating; their government is an utter failure, and there is nothing upon which to rest a hope for its permanence. Our congressmen are not gentlemen; and our citizens are entirely absorbed in business, politics, and tobacco. The New-Englanders, in particular, "are not an amiable people." "Nature, in forming a Yankee, seems to have given him double brains and half a heart." We are generally afflicted with various minor defects. We are inordinately vain, and should bless our protective vanity, even as Sancho Panza pronounces a benediction upon the man who first invented sleep. Our ladies are very beautiful,-till the age of one or two-and-twenty. The gentlemen are

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somewhat slouching in gait," "very expeditious bolters of dinner," and talk politics evermore in a tone of voice "partaking of a snivel and a drawl, by no means laudable on the score of euphony."

However, he was not willing to incur the displeasure of the Americans by a public expression of his opinions concerning them, until driven to it by pure love of country. And even now he is, doubtless, comforting himself with the sublime assurance, that he has shed a deluge of information upon many abstruse questions in political economy, and thereby turned multitudes of deluded liberals from the error of their ways. He confesses that his strictures are calculated to offend, but pleads patriotism in extenuation; and if his country is in as sore need of such a libel upon free institutions as he seems to imagine, let us verily don the panoply for which he so commends us, and bear his castigations with all long-suffering and patience.

A short time after the departure of the patriotic Mr. Hamilton, another writer of travels came over the wide ocean to look upon the "free-borns." This was Lieut. Coke of the British army. This gentleman is a very poetical personage; and each successive chapter is ushered in with a grand flourish of trumpets from Shakspeare,

Pope, or Byron. Although he is not so extremely careful to impress us with the extraordinary fact of his being a gentleman, as the patriotic, single-minded Mr. Hamilton, he shows that he possesses much more of the reality. Perhaps he writes in better style, because he is not burdened with the consciousness that he carries with him the fate of the new parliament. At all events, he does not possess in the same degree the "stupid, bigoted contempt for everything foreign." This book, upon the whole, is a very entertaining one, written in good temper and tolerably good style. Miss Harriet Martineau, a very philosophic lady, arrived in this country in 1834, and remained two years. On her return she published her adventures and reflections in two different works, which she entitles, "Views of Society in America," and "Retrospect of Western Travel." These are, in general, very favorable to the Americans; and perhaps that is the reason why we think them the most correct and interesting of our array of delineations of American character. She, too, traveled with her theory before her eyes. But her system was one of mildness and benevolence. It may be well described by one of her own expressive phrases,― "heart-faith in man." She, indeed, pushed her theory to an extreme, which reminds us of the fantasies of the French declaimers during the great Revolution: but in her, the only result was to cause her to feel an intense joy in all that was commendable in man, and to look with the utmost tenderness upon his frailties. Although a most decided ultraist in abolition principles, she indulges in none of the fierce denunciation which has distinguished some of her associates in opinion. She had the good fortune to discover that her theory, touching the dignity of human nature and the value of human happiness, was susceptible of being applied to the master, as well as the slave,—a fact which some of our reformers seem, in some cases, rather to overlook. And with all her predilection for traversing the debateable regions of political science, Miss Martineau preserved the freshness of the kindly affections; and she appears equally in her element when discussing her free-trade principles with grave senators, or preparing a German Christmas-tree for the gratification of the youthful members of her friend's family.

The next year after her return to England, our country was honored with a visit of one who possessed not a tithe of the talent of his feminine predecessor. This new explorer of republicanism was Capt. Marryat, the author of divers coarse, vulgar, ninth rate works of fiction. In defiance of all effort to be charitable, we cannot but deem his work a very inferior performance. His style is

beneath criticism; his affectation of candor and truth is beneath contempt; and his reasoning is but a degree or two above that heard in the idiot ward of an asylum. He commences his work with a long disquisition upon books of travels in general, and discourses right eloquently, as he thinks, upon their manifold errors, intimating that he will most assuredly avoid them. On the last page of the former "series" he recurs to the same subject, and informs us that his determination to set down naught in malice, or carelessly, had been strictly carried out; and that he had "not written one line without deliberation and examination." After such magnanimous flourishes as these, the expectations of the reader are justly raised; but he will find the work a worthless affair, without anything original except some new follies. To those who have read the work that heads our list, we may describe Capt. Marryat by saying, that he is a very diminutive Capt. Hall, conscience being subtracted, and a very coarse comic almanac added. He offends against good taste continually; he contradicts all matter of fact, and ends by contradicting his own words. This last, however, is of little moment, as no one will, in any case, receive statements upon his mere assertion. Those who have had the misfortune to read his nautical stories, will recollect his continual ribaldry and profanity. Yet his longest chapter in the first two volumes is upon "Religion in America,”—an instance of unparalleled effrontery since Barére wrote his pious meditations on the Psalms, and Abner Kneeland published his edition of the Greek Testament. He remarks, by the way, that Methodism is "the most pure, most mild, and most simple of all the creeds professed;" -a commendation which we can quote from him, without leading, as far as the sin of vanity is concerned, the most bigoted of our readers into temptation. A modern Democritus, however, may find some amusement in his philosophic speculations. Here is the result of his investigation into the causes of the too general use of spirituous liquors in America :

"I think that the climate is the occasion of two bad habits to which the Americans are prone, namely, the use of tobacco and of spirituous liquors. The system being depressed by the sudden changes, demands stimulus to equalize the pulse."-Vol. ii, pp. 208-9.

"In fact, the climate is one of extreme excitement. I had not been a week in the country, before I discovered how impossible it was for a foreigner to drink as much wine or spirits as he could in England."P. 206.

The exquisite absurdity of this specimen of dialectics would lead us, did it not involve a Hibernicism, to imagine that these passages VOL. VI.-33